Twitter’s new Magic Stats experiment focusses on popular tweets

Twitter is reportedly testing a new feature that supposedly identifies the popular tweets on the social network. Just like the company’s other experimental accounts @magicrecs and @eventparrot, Twitter has opened a new account called @magicstats for the new experiment.

The description of @magicstats reads: “I favorite the best tweets I see in real-time”. Despite being a protected account, TechCrunch and TheNextWeb have managed to gain some insight on the new feature works.

TechCrunch reports several of its tweets have been favorited by the account, which supposedly is based on various metrics including ‘velocity’ of activity such as favourites and retweets. The site claims the account is being followed by many members of Twitter’s search and relevance team, similar to the company’s other experimental accounts.

TheNextWeb in its report says when a user tweets something which Twitter thinks will be viral, it favorites the tweet within a few minutes of it being posted. The site says it received over 100 retweets within a few hours in two instances where @magicstats favorited its tweets.

So far, there’s no official word on the experiment. It’s worth mentioning here Twitter has clearly said it continues to experiment with features that may never be released to everyone who uses Twitter.

“Those experiments are perhaps even more valuable because they help us decide what not to do –– which is important as we work to keep Twitter simple while improving the user experience. Ultimately, our goal is to learn and keep making the product better; we aren’t necessarily looking to launch all of the experiments we roll out,” said Twitter in a blog post.

The update on Twitter’s new experimental feature comes shortly after the company pulled the option that allowed users to receive Direct Messages (DMs) to people they are not following on the network.

Twitter, however, continues to experiment with ‘recommendations’ with its @magicrecs account. The micro-blogging website is testing a tool that sends users direct message recommendations on who to follow. The feature is based on activity of accounts a user already follows.

Twitter recently came up with an experimental account, @eventparrot, which is supposed to send breaking news direct messages.